In a Web
by Risibility
Summary: After Gran died, Bella must move to Forks with Phil and Renée. While dealing with her own grief, a new extravagant house is being built next door. Only one man moves in. After a series of mysterious incidents, Bella starts to realize that something is terribly wrong. Full and better summary inside. Rated M for adult themes. Olderward and darkward. AU. BxE. R&R?


**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. It belongs to Stephenie Meyer.**

 **Full summary: Bella hasn't had the easiest upbringing. An absent mother left her to her grandmother's care and when she was thirteen her father took his own life. After her Gran also passes she has to return to the town she was born, a place she has no bond to. While dealing with her own grief and hardships, a new extravagant house is being built next door. She was expecting a big family, but only one man moves in.**

 **A/N: I really suck at summaries... I'm sorry. Okay. Hey, I'm Risibility and this is my first Fanfiction! So be kind ;-), but constructive criticism is always welcome! Since this is my very first story, I'm still quite new to how does things, and so on - and new to writing whatever I want, of course. I guess this is a spoiler, but there will be vampires in my story, however, my take on the vampires are different than Meyer's. There are also characters who were vampires in the book, who are very obviously human in this story. I'm also not American, so I'm not overly familiar with the school system and other details like that. Please bear with me... The story is Rated M, but I've come to realize that it might take some chapters before the M tag is needed. But it will be needed. The reason I started writing this fanfiction, is because I wanted to write a story I wished someone else had written for me. Does that make any sense? I would be a much happier person, if someone could just take a look inside my head and then write the story for me. Oh, well. I hope you like it and that you have a wonderful day! (I'm sorry for the long A/N .).**

CHAPTER 1

 _Dear Diary,_

 _I'm writing this with the beautiful noise of construction workers in my ears. The neighbour house is really coming along (not that I know anything of house building, except for my toddler years of playing with lego…). I guess the new family will move in soon._

 _Anyway. It would seem my life had taken the turn for the worse recently. After Gran died and I returned to live with Renée and her new husband Phil, I thought I had become immune against whoever controlled fate and whatever face was under the Grim Reaper's hood. As if, I had required some sort of invisible armour. I was wrong – of course._

 _Moving from Augusta, Maine, to Phoenix was a shock. I was surprised of how much I remembered. Even though I had lived in Phoenix for seven years, from when I was six 'till barely thirteen, I quickly renounced any memories of burning asphalt and horrific ballet classes. It was not that there was anything wrong with Phoenix; it was just that it had turned into some sort a symbol of abandonment. Expulsion. Banishment. When I was thirteen years old, my mother left me. And I had to move far away to the other side of the country. Since I was at the threshold of puberty when my mom left me, I wonder if it severed any bond we ever had. Psychologists and whatnot say that it is during our teenage years we develop a personality: values, dreams, fears... My mom was not there to see how I changed, and as a result, she recognized me less and less every holiday. I was no longer the Bella she knew, but she would always be Renée_ I knew _._

 _Gran died of a heart attack a few weeks before the summer holiday. We only had four years together (if you do not count the years after Charlie and Renée's divorce). I am glad I was not the one who found her. I don't want to remember her like that. Dead, that is. She was always very strong. Outspoken. Hardworking. Fearless._ Alive _. But she never expected the same from those around her. Maybe I was pampered too much? It hurts to think of her. It really does._

 _It was the therapist's idea that I write my thoughts and stuff down. Stuff about Gran – and stuff about my dad. But I really don't know what to say. My dad was a drunk. But he wasn't a mean drunk? Renée told me he developed the habit after their divorce, which makes me kind of mad with her (almost as if it was her fault, but of course it wasn't), however, I never really knew him to begin with so… I don't know what I'm missing. He wanted to take me in after Renée left. He wasn't granted custody and then committed suicide. I was thirteen. Boom. The story of my life._

 _I'm sorry. Even though I never intend for anyone to read this, I still want it to be somewhat novel. I'm never going to be an Anne Frank, but I would still like to read this ten years from now and be able to understand just how I was feeling at this point in my life._

 _You see, right now I'm in his house. My father Charlie's house. I inherited it after he died. Gran tried to sell it, but since he died here, no one wanted it. And right now, Renée, Phil and I live here. In Forks. In a dead man's house. Renèe had all these reasons: money's tight, Phil was able to get a teaching job, she still knows some of the people in the neighbourhood, etc. It is all true, but it doesn't make it okay. Since the house is mine, they actually pay me rent. Which is really weird, too. On the bright side, this means I don't have to travel around the country to see Phil hit a ball with a bat._

 _I haven't been able to sleep, because of the noise from the neighbour house. It's being renovated (or completely demolished and rebuilt, if you want my opinion) as I mentioned. We haven't met the owners yet. They must be loaded, though. I am by no means an architect, but that gigantic piece of minimalism is putting the rest of Forks to shame. I wonder if perhaps Forks is slowly turning into a "rich people resort". Maybe I could sell Charlie's property then? Or maybe I can just sell the house to the new family moving in, so that we no longer ruin the view. That would be nice. A girl can dream. Wow. Suddenly, I'm writing about non-depressing stuff. What happened to my youth? Well, school starts in a couple of days, so I guess I'm just saving up my teenage moodiness for that. Yay. I guess I'll write later? I don't know how to say goodbye to a diary._

 _Bye._

Bella slowly closed the aquamarine notebook. It was the first day, since moving to Forks that the sun had come out to shine. No rain, no clouds. The sky was actually blue. It would have been the perfect day to spend stretched out on the lawn if it hadn't been for the never-ending noise from the neighbour. And for the fact that the grass was a little damp. She had wanted to spend the afternoon reading and writing, but she felt too restless to write more, yet too fatigued to do anything remotely productive. Since there was currently no internet connection, she had had the wonderful experience of how it must have been to be a teenager in the nineties this summer. She has almost ended up watching baseball on the battered TV with Phil.

Sighing, Bella turned over and looked over at the construction workers, while her hand pulled at the grass beside the blanket. They were working hard. She figured that the family was going to move in any day now and so the men were perfecting everything before their arrival. Bella pulled up more grass. No one had mowed the lawn in ages, so there were more than enough grass straws to free from their earthly bonds. She turned on her back. Three big clouds had appeared on the sky. She knew that even though they now looked like cotton, they would eventually evaporate and rain all over Forks. Eventually.

She stood up, and meant to go inside the house, but the shrill voice of Renée's on the phone stopped her. She wanted solitude and silence. Two things that were never to be found in Charlie's house with the construction work going on next door and her mother's ever presence. She wondered if Renée was trying to make up for the last four years of bad parenting. She wasn't sure.

Sitting up, she stretched and looked over next door again. She tried to picture who would live there and if there would be babies screaming at night or teenagers like herself staying there. Well, not exactly like herself, since she was no millionaire's daughter. A figure dangling from a rope flashed through Bella's mind. She shook her head in a feeble attempt to erase the imaginary memory and stood up. She was barefoot and the cool grass felt heavenly between her toes. Leaving the blanket behind her on the lawn, she walked towards the newly risen house. The house that made Fork's trees seem small, the house that made it seem like humanity had finally won over nature. The real problem with the new neighbours was that they were the only two houses at the end of the street. The other houses were further away from the woods, while Charlie's house – and the mysterious neighbour's house – were placed a little bit into the forest. Leaving both of the houses in shadow (there was only a small square on the lawn where the sun reached midday) and completely isolated from the rest of the street.

And that was why the thought of the new neighbours occupied her mind. Because at some point she would have to interact with them. Technically, she could just ask some of the men working on the house about who was moving in. The house looked fine, so they couldn't possibly be as busy as they were a couple of months ago… Having moved through the trees, Bella now had a clear view of the white building. There were many big windows and she could already imagine her mother spying through them with a set of binoculars. They would also have very high electricity bills, come winter, with all those enormous windows, she mused.

Moving even closer – she was trying to think of a natural way of acquiring some dirt on her future neighbours.

"Ouch!" Occupied by her own mind, she had stepped on something hard. Looking down, she discovered a hammer. A hammer. A somewhat outdated tool, however, since her expertise of turning trees, bricks and other materials into buildings where people could live and sleep was so limited, she didn't really have that much to say. Except for "ouch", obviously. Picking up the hammer, it was apparent that it belonged to some of the construction workers. It was brand new. It was funny how it had ended up so far from the house, though. Maybe someone had forgotten it while eating lunch, she pondered, weighing the hammer in her hand. On the other hand so did this finding gave her an excellent reason to "trespass".

Walking swiftly over the grass field, she saw that there was no one outside. The backdoor was open, though, and she peeked inside. No one was there. Over the deafening sound, she yelled "hello". No answer. Duh, she thought and stepped inside. The first thing she noticed was how tall it was under the ceiling. So much volume. Everything was empty, but the light wooden floor shined and the white walls were very white. She became acutely aware of the fact that she wasn't wearing any shoes. She was seriously considering just leaving the hammer on the floor and make a run for it back to Charlie's house, when the ongoing raucous just stopped. Following the sound of the men's voices she crossed a big room, which was only occupied by a beautiful, yet somewhat intimidating grand piano, and to a staircase. It wasn't just a staircase, though. The impression this empty house gave her was something out of a movie. Old money. Lots of money. Enough money to buy style, if you didn't have any. Bella was beginning to understand that whoever was going to live her, probably wouldn't want Renée's "welcome-to-the-neighbourhood-blueberry-muffins"... Not that any sane person would risk their wellbeing trying to eat bricks made from flour.

Halfway up the stairs, a man in a helmet appeared on the second floor. Seeing her, he quickly yelled: "Oi, careful, there's…!". Bella had never been exactly sure whether she was just clumsy or if she simply had been cursed with bad luck since the day she took her first step. Today, it would seem as both her bad luck and clumsiness were out for blood. At the man's holler, she had jumped, landed wrong, her left foot landed in something wet. Everything went black and quiet immediately when her head made contact with the edge of one of the steps.

Sound always comes first. At the back of her mind, Bella could remember a British documentary about babies, where they said that new-borns' hearing was echo-like and that was why adults instinctively did the whole baby-talk-thing. _Taaaaalk sloooowly_. She wished the noises outside her head could slow down a bit. She couldn't grasp anything. All it took was time, though. Little by little, the world did slow down and turned back into something comprehensible. She opened her eyes. Just as her hearing, it took a while before the visual information made sense and turned into where she expected to herself to be: in a hospital.

"Claustrophobic White Rooms: The Life of Bella Swan" would be the name of her auto-biography, she swore. She had been to her fair share – and then some – of hospitals, and the only nice thing she could say about the décor was that it didn't confuse its patients. You knew where you were. Unless your brain was completely scrambled. A nurse noticed her, smiled, walked over and explained to her where she was and what had happened. Then he went to get a doctor. Stairs and wood finishing oil had happened. She was fine, though. She would live to battle her long-time enemy (AKA the stair) yet again.

The doors opened and the nurse walked in accompanied by a person in a white coat... a doctor. Bella touched her forehead. Maybe she was more scrambled than anticipated. Everything was still moving slowly. The doctor introduced himself as Doctor Cullen. He was blonde with a very calming voice. He was in his late forties, she wagered. He would have been handsome if it hadn't been for the dark circles under his eyes. After a closer check-up, he concluded that she was fine, but that she had given them a scare when she was brought in with the ambulance. There had been no neck injury, though... No head trauma... Be more careful next time. Will do. Have yourself some painkillers. Sure. If you feel any dizziness... and where are your shoes? Etc, etc. Then he started telling her about this new amazing doctor who would be joining their staff after the summer holiday. At this point, Bella wasn't paying attention any longer, but absentmindedly worried where her mother was and whether or not neighbours would come knocking at their door, wondering what had happened. She was also relieved that Doctor Cullen, with the nice voice, but dreary eyes hadn't mentioned her father. He knew her name – and the name Swan was a rare one.

Renée didn't disappoint. She was inconsolable. She cried. Then hugged the doctor and one of the other patients (who was probably worse off than her). Still, in her distress, Renée was able to guide her to the car.

"Oooh, Bellaaa!" her mother cried. "I thought this was it. Now, she's done it. I was so scared. So worried" She gave her yet another hug.

"You were soooo lucky! Didn't you hear what dr. Cullen said? So lucky, yes." She opened the car and helped Bella get seated.

"And you were so lucky that it was dr. Cullen who checked you. One of the best neurosurgeons in the state. God knows what he's doing in Forks... Been here all these years, yes, I remember him from when you were a baby. Hmm. I suppose it was that wife of his… Esme, is that the name? It was such a long time ago now, but she suffered this horrible miscarriage. Was never the same. Yes, yes. It was truly horrible. I mean, I don't know them personally, since they're older and everything. But we all grew up here. But… Esme and Carlisle – doctor Cullen – they were one of those people… well, Forks was too small for them. They weren't supposed to stay here, you know? Adopted a child in the end, though. I think she's about your age. Beautiful and smart like her parents. Yes, yes."

Renée had never ceased to amaze Bella with her vast and in-depth network of gossip. While she herself always felt in the dark about those around her, her mother's stories were never-ending and too intrusive even, at times. Bella leaned back in the car seat and watched all the green trees fly by. It has started raining again, as she had predicted. It was then it dawned on her. She had almost killed herself in another family's house, because of something as trivial as curiosity. There was a reason why construction workers wore those yellow helmets. Curiosity killed the cat. Well, it was a good thing she wasn't a cat.

Bella got slowly out of the car when they reached the house and walked carefully towards the lawn to get the blanket and her diary. She guessed Phil hadn't noticed that it started raining.

After changing to pyjamas and taking a couple of painkillers, Bella was sitting comfortably in the sofa looking outside the window. It was dark outside and it wasn't raining, but pouring. The sound of the rain was nice. It helped her headache in a way. She wondered absentmindedly if the worker who had lost the hammer had had it returned. In the kitchen she could hear Phil making dinner, which was usually her job. She walked over to the kitchen to see if there was anything she could help with. Phil was chopping some yellow peppers.

It was then it happened. Looking out of the window a black sports car appeared at the end of the street, approaching fast. Phil froze and stared. The car continued down the street towards us. It didn't stop, though: it continued. While Phil mumbled something about a Martin and James Bond, I walked quietly upstairs to my room where out of the window, I could see the car stop before our neighbouring house.

The car door opened, and a tall man got out. Even though it was raining cats and dogs, he didn't seem to be in a hurry. He walked slowly towards the building. Then he stopped. In a lazy manner he turned his head and studied our house. It was dark, so it was impossible to make out any features nor expressions. But Bella could feel his stare and it was then she realized that even though she couldn't see him, _he_ _could see her_. He could see right into her bedroom, where the lights were turned on and she was standing right in front of her window in plain view. In a plunge she turned off her light. Her pulse was hammering in her ear. She lowered herself to the floor and crawled to her window.

When she looked outside, the man was gone.

 **Did you make it to the very end? I don't think every chapter will be this long. We'll see. Thank you for reading it (I hope someone did...)! Even if you didn't like it x). Wow, I can't believe I've finally posted something after reading so many ff written by others... I'm sure you now the drill: review, review, review ;-). Tell me what you liked/disliked. Ask me questions. Reviews=faster update, soo... ^^ Thank you. ~Risibility**


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